Though school administrators asked that rally participants focus on the budget cuts, many also carried "No War On Iraq" signs. One banner from Chabot College read, "Stop wars on Iraq, on education."

In January Davis announced that the California budget had a $34.6 billion "shortfall" and proposed cuts in state programs of over $20 billion for the 2003–2004 budget.

Davis’s proposed budget includes an almost 10 percent decrease, $700 million, in the spending levels for California’s 108 community colleges, while increasing student fees from $11 per unit to $24 per unit. According to one report, "The Budget estimates that the state will save an additional $215 million because of short-term attrition," in other words, students who are forced to drop out of school.

There are about 2.9 million community college students in California. According to the Community College League of California, more than 200,000 students would be forced out of school by the cuts.

"My dad is a farm worker, and I’m the first child in our family to go to college," said Mariela Navarro. "I can’t afford college if these cuts are made--that’s why I came to participate."

"It is unfair what they are trying to do to community colleges," said Shanite Young, a student at Compton Community College. "There are a lot of working mothers at community colleges. Take the money from the prison system, not schools," she said.

Young was referring to Davis’s plan to budget funds for a new maximum-security prison in Delano, and remodeling San Quentin’s death row. Spending for the Department of Corrections is slated to increase by $40.2 million next year. The proposed budget aims to force a $854 million reduction in most state employees’ wages. Prison guards and other Department of Corrections employees would receive wage increases of $2.4 million this year, and $6.7 million next year.

In order to skirt Proposition 98, passed in 1988, which requires 50 cents of every dollar of additional revenue collected in the state to go toward education, Davis has proposed shifting a number of programs to county control, like nursing-home care, child care, and mental health programs. High school districts around the state have already sent out layoff notices to teachers and staff. The San Francisco Unified School District sent out 700 layoff notices, and eliminated summer school music, art, and theater programs for elementary school students. The district is expecting between $21 million and $25 million in state budget cuts for next year.

On March 12 hundreds of high school students walked out of San Leandro High School in the East Bay and rallied at City Hall against the school district’s layoff notices to 119 employees, mainly teachers and counselors. Many students had notes from their parents asking that they be excused from classes.

In southern California, preliminary termination notices were sent to almost a quarter of Burbank’s teachers. Students and parents organized a protest of the teacher layoffs on March 14.

All full-time employees at Compton Community College received notices of possible layoffs on March 12. Sixty members of the faculty union protested at a Board of Trustees meeting.

In addition to the attacks on education, Davis is proposing to: increase the state’s sales and cigarette taxes; reduce cash assistance payments, employment services, and child care programs that are part of CalWORKS (state welfare program); cut the state supplemental social security payments by over 6 percent; reduce or eliminate Medi-Cal health benefits for low income families; and defer payments into the state’s pension plan for state workers.

Payment of $30 billion in interest and principal on state bonds held by the wealthy would be left untouched.

On March 11 the state assembly approved $3.3 billion in spending cuts. One bill, sponsored by San Francisco Democrat Mark Leno, would authorize cities and counties to levy income taxes on top of the federal and state income tax.

While California’s budget deficit of $34.6 billion is a record, New York State is projecting a whopping $11.5 billion deficit, while Texas is not far behind with $9.9 billion--what Bloomberg News calls the "biggest U.S. state budget shortfalls since World War II." California has the world’s fifth largest economy.  
 
 
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